We’ll define digital PR, then walk through the specific tactics and a step-by-step playbook to use digital PR to boost search visibility, with realistic timelines, metrics, and common failure modes.

What is digital PR?

Digital PR is creating something genuinely publishable (data, expert insight, a sharp angle, a useful tool, a timely point of view), then pitching it to online publications and creators who already have your audience’s attention. If it lands, you get third-party coverage. If it’s done well, you also earn editorial links and brand mentions that strengthen your search presence over time.

That “something publishable” is the part most teams skip. They treat digital PR like outreach. Real digital PR is closer to product marketing: you’re packaging an insight so a journalist can turn it into a story in under ten minutes.

Here’s what it looks like in the real world:

• A data story: Asana’s State of Work Innovation research (a large survey-based report) is a classic example of a PR-ready asset. It gives journalists quotable stats and multiple angles to write about.
• A linkable “source of truth” page: Ahrefs built a stats page, then ran targeted outreach. They documented sending 515 emails and earning dozens of backlinks from linking websites, and the page ultimately ranked #1 for “SEO stats.” That is digital PR thinking applied with SEO measurement discipline.

The point is not “get press.” The point is to earn credible third-party validation that search engines and humans both respond to: editorial links, citations, and brand familiarity.

How digital PR differs from related concepts

Digital PR vs. link building

Link building is usually page-first: “We need links to this URL to move this keyword.” Digital PR is story-first: “We have a story that deserves coverage, and the links are one byproduct.”

That difference sounds subtle until you watch it play out. A link building team might write a guest post and negotiate an anchor text. A digital PR team might publish an original dataset or a sharp industry analysis, then earn citations from journalists who are writing their own stories. Same outcome (links), different why, different quality, different compounding.

Even industry guides that are link-building oriented call out that digital PR is broader than classic link building because it’s built around coverage, credibility, and relationships, not just acquisition.

Digital PR vs. traditional PR

Traditional PR can be about offline reach (print, TV, radio) and reputation. Digital PR keeps the reputation part, but the distribution and measurement are native to the internet: online publishers, newsletters, podcasts, YouTube, social, search demand, referral traffic, and backlinks.

In practice, the biggest difference is feedback loops. In digital PR, you can tie coverage to what happened next: branded search lift, referral spikes, new referring domains, and ranking movement.

Digital PR vs. content marketing

Content marketing is usually owned media: you publish on your site and promote it. Digital PR is earned media: someone else publishes the story (or references your asset) because it’s useful for their audience.

Great teams combine them. The digital PR asset becomes the content hub. The earned coverage becomes distribution. The SEO team gets durable backlinks and topical authority signals. The growth team gets a story they can run through paid and lifecycle.

Benefits of digital PR for search visibility (what actually moves)

You’ll see a lot of fluff like “build awareness” and “increase authority.” Here’s what that means in consequences and metrics.

Digital PR tends to matter most when you’re competing in a SERP where everybody has “good content.” In those SERPs, authority and familiarity decide who gets the click and who gets buried.

1) You earn higher-trust links than most scalable link tactics.
Editorial links are hard to fake at scale, and they usually come from sites that already have authority. Industry guidance consistently frames digital PR as a way to earn high-quality backlinks and build authority for SEO.

2) It helps you compete in SERPs where backlinks are still a differentiator.
Large correlation studies continue to show that top-ranking results tend to have stronger link profiles. Backlinko’s large analysis of Google results is one of the most cited examples in the SEO world.
Ahrefs has also published research showing a relationship between referring domains and organic traffic, and explains the “vicious circle” where top results keep earning more links over time.

3) You get branded search lift, which makes SEO easier downstream.
Here’s the thing: once people know your name, your whole SEO program gets cheaper. Your content gets clicked more. Your outreach gets warmer. Your sales team stops fighting “who are you?” objections. Digital PR’s coverage creates those brand touchpoints in a way that blog posts rarely do.

4) You build assets journalists keep citing.
A good digital PR asset can pay you back for years, because writers keep needing the stat, the chart, or the definition. That’s the quiet win. One placement is nice. Becoming the “source” is the real game.

Digital PR tactics that reliably boost search visibility

1) Data-led stories that journalists can quote in one sentence

If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of a journalist’s deadline, you know the truth: they’re not looking for your “thought leadership.” They’re looking for a clean number and a credible source.

Asana’s big research report example is useful because it’s not just “we surveyed people.” It’s structured to produce quotable insights and multiple editorial angles.

Where teams mess this up is they publish a PDF that hides the data behind a form. Journalists will still cover it sometimes, but you’re making it harder than it needs to be. If search visibility is your goal, build a crawlable on-site hub with key charts and callouts, then offer the full report as optional.

2) “Stats pages” and evergreen source hubs (SEO’s sleeper PR play)

Ahrefs’ “SEO statistics” case study is a great blueprint because it’s not sexy, it’s just effective. They created a page built to attract links, ran outreach, documented the campaign volume (515 emails), earned backlinks, and the page went on to rank.

The move here is positioning: you’re not pitching “our company.” You’re pitching “the internet’s most useful page on this topic.” That’s a digital PR angle wearing an SEO hat.

3) Expert commentary programs (but built like a system, not a scramble)

If you only do reactive PR when someone pings you, you’ll miss most opportunities. The win is building a system: clear spokespeople, a handful of tight talking points, proof points (numbers, customer examples), and a repeatable way to respond fast.

One caution from the last year: if your commentary program relied heavily on HARO/Connectively, you probably felt the disruption. Prezly’s overview notes that HARO (after being rebranded as Connectively) shut down on December 9, 2024, then later reopened in April 2025. That volatility is exactly why we like to diversify into direct journalist lists, niche newsletters, and platforms like Qwoted rather than betting everything on one inbox feed.

4) Newsjacking that actually earns links (not just social impressions)

Newsjacking works when you bring something to the story that the journalist can’t get elsewhere: proprietary data, a credible expert, or a unique angle that’s grounded in reality.

A lot of guides talk about “react fast.” Sure. But the real constraint is “react with substance.” If your comment is generic, it’s not getting picked up. If your angle includes a real stat from your own dataset, now you’re interesting.

5) Product-led PR moments (only when it’s truly news)

Press releases for “we shipped a button” won’t move search visibility. A meaningful launch can. The Semrush guide frames product news as a valid digital PR lane when it’s actually newsworthy and tied to what journalists are already covering.

This is where SEO teams can add leverage: build a launch page that targets the non-branded query cluster, then use PR coverage to send authority signals to that page, not just to your homepage.

When digital PR makes sense (and when it doesn’t)

Digital PR makes sense when you have (1) something worth saying, (2) at least a quarter to let compounding kick in, and (3) a SERP where authority is the differentiator.

If you’re a B2B SaaS company trying to rank for competitive category terms, digital PR is often the difference between “we publish content forever” and “we actually crack page one.” The link and brand effects compound, and they make every other channel perform better.

On the flip side, if you need pipeline next month and you can’t invest in an asset that’s genuinely publishable, you’re going to hate this channel. You’ll do a rushed campaign, get ignored, and conclude “PR doesn’t work.” In that situation, you’re usually better off putting the next 30 days into demand capture (paid search, retargeting, outbound) while you build the raw material (data, customer stories, POV) that makes PR doable later.

What our research team is seeing today – July, 2026

Across current digital PR work, the teams getting the biggest SEO lift aren’t doing “one big splash” and calling it a quarter. They’re building a drumbeat: one substantial asset every 8 to 12 weeks (data, a benchmark report, an interactive), plus weekly or biweekly expert commentary that keeps the brand showing up in the conversation.

We’re also seeing measurement expectations mature. Instead of promising “rankings in 30 days,” strong teams set two time horizons: early indicators (placements, referring domains, referral traffic, branded search trend) in the first 30 to 60 days, and SEO movement (ranking lifts on the linked-to hub and adjacent cluster pages) in the 90 to 180 day window. That lines up with the broader SEO reality that links and authority effects compound over time, not overnight.

One more pattern that’s hard to ignore in 2025: digital PR is increasingly pulling double duty for AI-driven discovery. (Want to track that impact? See our guide to tracking brands in ChatGPT and Perplexity.) Earned mentions across credible sites are becoming part of how brands show up, not just in classic blue links, but in the overall “who gets referenced” layer of the web. Search Engine Land has been covering this convergence of earned media and modern search visibility.

What top experts are saying

You don’t have to take “PR matters for SEO” on faith. Even Google’s John Mueller has publicly praised digital PR, noting it’s a shame it’s often lumped in with spammy link building and saying it can be as important as technical SEO, or more, in many cases.

Rand Fishkin has been banging a different drum that ends up in the same place: clicks and attribution are getting messier, and marketers need to invest in influence and demand creation rather than assuming rankings alone will do the job. His writing on the decline of clean attribution is basically a warning label for anyone who thinks “just publish more content” is a growth strategy.

And if you want the practitioner data, BuzzStream’s 2025 State of Digital PR report is a useful snapshot of what digital PR pros are actually doing and wrestling with right now, based on interviews conducted in late 2024.

How to use digital PR to boost search visibility (a practical playbook)

1) Start with a search visibility goal, not a “press” goal

If the goal is “get coverage,” you’ll optimize for logos and vanity wins. If the goal is “increase search visibility,” you’ll make different choices: which page you want links to hit, which topics you want to build authority around, and which publications actually influence your market.

Pick one primary outcome for the next 90 to 180 days. Examples that are concrete enough to manage:

• Improve rankings for a specific non-branded topic cluster (the pages you want to lift should already exist or be in progress).
• Increase branded search demand (especially if you’re losing clicks to bigger brands).
• Grow referring domains to your domain and to one priority hub page.

Now the campaign can be designed like a growth experiment, not a vibes project.

2) Build an asset that is easy to cite

This is the part that separates “we tried PR” from “we have a PR engine.”

A good digital PR asset has three properties:

It’s specific (a tight claim with proof), scannable (a journalist can grab it fast), and credible (methodology, sourcing, or clear firsthand data).

If you’re doing research, show your methodology in plain English. If you’re using internal data, explain the sample and caveats. If you’re creating a “stats page,” make it ridiculously well-organized.

Then make it crawlable. A PDF can exist, but the source hub should live on your site where links help the page that needs to rank.

3) Decide where links should go before you pitch a single inbox

Most digital PR campaigns accidentally point authority to the homepage. It feels safe. It’s also a waste if you’re trying to win non-branded search.

Pick one of these link targets:

• The data hub (best when you want that page to rank and earn more organic links).
• A category page (best when you’re in a competitive market and need authority on the money page).
• A supporting guide that connects the PR angle to a broader cluster.

Once you choose, make sure the page is technically ready: fast, indexable, internally linked from relevant pages, and not buried in your navigation.

4) Build a media list like a performance marketer builds audiences

Stop thinking in terms of “top tier” versus “not top tier.” Think in terms of relevance and distribution.

We like three buckets:

A handful of high-authority publications that shape the conversation, a larger set of niche trades where your buyers actually pay attention, and a list of newsletters and creators who can amplify quickly.

Most campaigns fail because the list is lazy. It’s scraped. It’s not aligned to the story.

5) Pitch with receipts, not adjectives

Journalists don’t care that your report is “groundbreaking.” They care that it gives them a clean angle and a credible stat.

A pitch that works usually has:

A one-sentence headline, a 2 to 3 sentence story angle, 2 to 3 bullet-proof data points, and a line about why it matters right now.

Keep it short. If you have to explain it for five paragraphs, it’s not ready.

6) Follow up like a human, then turn coverage into SEO leverage

Once coverage lands, the campaign isn’t done. This is where search visibility gets amplified.

Make sure your own site is using the moment: internal links to the hub, a short update on your blog that points to the coverage (no need to spam it), and distribution through your owned channels.

If a publication mentions you without a link, consider a gentle link request, but only when it’s truly additive. Digital PR is a long game. Don’t burn relationships for a single URL.

7) Measure what matters (and keep the timeline honest)

Digital PR measurement is where stakeholder trust gets won or lost.

Track leading indicators quickly (placements, referral traffic, new referring domains), but evaluate SEO impact over a longer window. Ahrefs’ research on backlink growth and rankings is a useful reminder that authority effects compound and tend to show up over time, not instantly.

Here’s the metric set we use most often:

• Referring domains to the campaign hub
• Branded search trend (Google Search Console impressions for brand queries)
• Rankings for the target cluster (not just the one keyword)
• Referral traffic quality (engagement, assisted conversions)
• New links earned without outreach (the “second-order” effect)

That list is enough to prove value without drowning in dashboards.

Common challenges (and how to avoid the usual faceplants)

The most common failure is building an asset that’s secretly an ad. Journalists can smell it. If your “study” only exists to validate your product category, it won’t earn coverage, and even if it does, it won’t earn the kind of citations that compound.

The second failure is impatience. Teams expect SEO movement in weeks, don’t see it, and stop. That’s how you end up with a graveyard of “campaign pages” that never got a second wave of distribution. Plan for 90 to 180 days of measurement from day one, and you’ll make smarter calls.

The third is over-reliance on one channel for commentary opportunities. The HARO/Connectively shutdown and later reopening is a perfect reminder that platforms change. Build direct relationships and diversify where you source opportunities.

Our research process

At Relevance, we sit in the messy middle where SEO meets PR meets growth. We’ve helped teams build digital PR programs that are designed to do two things at the same time: earn real coverage people actually read, and earn the kinds of editorial links and brand mentions that make search visibility compound over quarters.

When we write about digital PR, we’re not treating it like a “links tactic” you bolt onto SEO at the end. We’re looking at how the story, the asset, the pitch list, and the measurement plan fit together, because that’s where most campaigns fall apart. One team will spend a month on a “data study,” then send a generic blast to 300 inboxes and wonder why nothing lands. Another will win coverage, but point every link to the homepage and learn nothing about what actually drove rankings.

To sanity-check our POV, we also reviewed current practitioner guidance and industry data on what’s working right now, including how SEO teams are rating digital PR versus other link building tactics, plus current realities in source platforms (the HARO to Connectively saga being a recent case study in “don’t build your whole program on one channel”).

How we research articles at Relevance.com

Our articles start with how we see tactics work in real growth programs: what teams do, what they measure, what actually compounds, and where campaigns break under stakeholder pressure. We aim to write like practitioners because that’s who this is for.

Then we validate with external sources that document mechanisms and current realities. For this article, we consulted:

• Search Engine Land’s 2025 guide to digital PR for SEO (definition, mechanics, and how PR intersects with E-E-A-T and links). (Search Engine Land)
• Semrush’s guide to digital PR and campaign structure (tactics and examples like research studies and expert commentary). (Semrush)
• Ahrefs’ documented link-building case study and backlink research (practical results and link-to-ranking dynamics). (Ahrefs)
• BuzzStream’s 2025 State of Digital PR report and link-building statistics coverage (industry trends and practitioner sentiment). (BuzzStream)
• Prezly’s summary of the HARO/Connectively timeline (platform volatility and why diversification matters). (Prezly.com)
• Backlinko’s large-scale ranking factors analysis (commonly referenced correlation benchmarks around links and rankings). (Backlinko)

The post What is Digital PR? + How to Use it to Boost Search Visibility appeared first on Relevance.

It can be hard to know where to start looking for resources when diving into the tech space. Not only must your tech publication of choice have accurate information, it also needs to suit your purposes. So if your current go-to resources aren’t keeping you up-to-date, you need to see what else is out there.

We reviewed dozens of online tech resources and found the best the web has to offer that can help with your digital PR and daily reading. Some are old standbys and some are diamonds in the rough, but all have valuable tech insight.

Top tech publications:

1. WIRED for tech news presented in a fun, stylish way targeted towards young professionals – Top tech publication for readers under age 40
2. DevX for detailed articles on subjects such as business software, innovating from scratch, and development – Top tech publication for technologists.
3. Tech Crunch for readers interested in a staple tech publication – Best resource for new and upcoming technology
4. Forbes for a trusted publication covering in-depth tech news – Best source of expert-written content
5. Technori for news and reviews of the most anticipated tech releases & early-startup up news – Best coverage for early-stage founders
6. Medium for access to a wide range of reader-generated, tech-oriented news – Top “crowd sourced” tech publication
7. WSJ for tech-related news useful for a diverse range of consumers – Top tech source for large businesses
8. SmallBiz Technology for essential tech applications for small business, keeping owners informed about the tech industry – Top tech resource for small businesses
9. CNET for a reliable publication to keep you updated on the latest tech trends – Best resource for mainstream tech topics
10. VentureBeat is a leader in the transformative tech news space – Best coverage of innovative tech topics
11. The Verge for those looking for in-depth tech pieces – Top publication for detailed tech information
12. Tech Republic for IT experts in the tech space looking for detailed content – Popular tech source for IT professionals
13. Bloomberg News for accessibility for beginners in the tech industry – Top publication for tech basics
14. The Next Web for a wide range of topic areas that cater to every tech consumer – Best universal tech publication
15. PC Magazine for reliable information on the newest tech gadgets – Best source for tech product reviews

The top tech publications reviewed

1. WIRED

Top tech publication for readers under age 40

WIRED provides tech news and information in a fun, stylish way. You can find articles on topics ranging from tech gear to science, making this a great publication for young professionals. The publication is at the forefront for innovative trends and the newest technology.

2. DevX

Top tech publication for technologists.

Since 1998, DevX has helped people start businesses, build websites, and provide enterprise technology to people globally. Interviewing the likes of Microsoft’s co-founder, Steve Ballmer, the publication brings comprehensive, reliable, and accessible insights to the internet. Since the boom of SaaS and inclusive technology tools, DevX has expanded its publication topics to include content on emerging technologies, small business technology and easy-use tech applications.

3. TechCrunch

Best resource for new and upcoming technology

TechCrunch is a staple publication for those interested in tech news. With more than 12 million visitors per month, it is a highly trusted publication to access new technology information. They also provide unique features like a newsletter and events that can be attended by their TechCrunch+ subscribers.

4. Forbes

Best source of expert-written content

A highly respected publication, Forbes provides in-depth technical news for its readers. They provide a large contributor platform, allowing readers to gain insights from many different perspectives. You can also access a printed version that highlights some of their most successful articles. If you are a small business owner or a corporate executive, you are guaranteed to find useful information to suit your tech needs.

5. Technori

Best coverage for early-stage founders

Technori began as a local meet-up designed to network with angel investors and early adopters and quickly grew into one of the nation’s largest media platforms for entrepreneurs. Since inception, the publication has been a champion of founders and investors at all levels who seek institutional-grade access to private markets.

6. Medium

Top “crowd sourced” tech publication

Medium covers a wide range of topics including data science, programming, machine learning, and more. However, it’s a particularly unique publication because it allows the readers to become the writers. Therefore, anyone can write on Medium; so this makes the range of tech topics rich and diverse to allow readers to understand the entire tech picture.

7. Wall Street Journal

Top tech source for large businesses

WSJ provides readers with all the information they need to be successful business professionals. You can find in-depth articles about personal technology to make you a better consumer. Additionally, it provides valuable business tech pieces applicable to a wide array of industries.

8. SmallBiz Technology

Top tech resource for small businesses

Starting your own business can be difficult and confusing. Furthermore, many entrepreneurs are in the dark regarding the latest tech trends for your businesses success. If you’re looking for a great tool to start or grow your business, SmallBiz Technology is a great publication to have in your toolkit.

9. CNET

Best resource for mainstream tech topics

If you need to keep up with the latest tech trends and news, this is a solid, universal publication. You can find the latest information on topics such as computing, software, gaming, and more. So, this is great for those who are just starting in the tech space, but it can also be useful for long-term tech veterans.

10. VentureBeat

Best coverage of innovative tech topics

AI and machine learning can be confusing topics. However,VentureBeat guides consumers through these topics as well as many others. A leading source for transformative tech news, VentureBeat is certainly a great publication to keep on your roster.

11. The Verge

Top publication for detailed tech information

While The Verge covers topics such as entertainment and science, their pieces regarding tech are particularly valuable. For instance, you can find articles about hardware, apps, and tech companies like Apple and Google, just to name a few. In short, if you are looking for a full-circle publication on mainstream tech, this is a great resource.

12. Tech Republic

Popular tech source for IT professionals

Tech Republic is a go-to publication for IT professionals seeking business oriented news in the IT space. In addition, they uniquely offer tech predictions to give readers an inside perspective on the evolving tech industry. Likewise, you can also find various resources including forums, a newsletter, and a resource library for readers to utilize.

14. Bloomberg News

Top publication for tech basics

A highly respected publication for everything surrounding business related news, this is a great place to start if you are a beginner in the tech industry. Moreover, you can also find many great tech tools, including Foundering, a tech oriented podcast to make learning easy and accessible. On Bloomberg News, you can find information on topics such as crypto, investments, climate adaption, and more.

13. The Next Web

Best universal tech publication

Catering to every consumer, The Next Web is a great place to check out for everything in tech-related news. For example, you can find articles on topics such as apps, AI and futurism, startups, and more. If you need to stay up-to-date on the latest tech news, check out this publication.

14. PC Magazine

Best source for tech product reviews

If you’re in the market for new tech gadgets, PC Mag is a great resource. They provide various reviews and how-to tutorials on the newest tech gadgets. This allows readers to come to an informed decision about the latest tech gadgets. Therefore, when you are considering investing in any new tech, we recommend checking this publication.

Methodology Behind a Great Technology Publication

Creating a successful and trusted tech publication can be a tricky process. However, the publications we chose have mastered the “secret sauce” when it comes to great tech publications. Here are a few common themes we have noticed:

Easy to navigate

Each publication should be accessible for a wide range of readers. The desired information should be found with ease to make the process as efficient as possible.

Accurate

Quality publications are often backed by experts and hard facts, accompanied by credible sources.

Affordable

Many of these publications provide readers with a set number of free articles to read each month. But, if you are looking for a wider array of resources, they provide affordable monthly subscription options.

Current

A tech publication needs to do a great job of providing the most current information to its reader. This is especially important due to the constantly evolving tech landscape.

Looking for other publication, here are a few to pay attention too:

• Top Finance Publications
• Top Small Business Publications
• Top Marketing Publications

The post The top technology publications and blogs to read in 2026 appeared first on Relevance.

What is digital PR?

To understand the benefits, it’s essential to know what digital PR is and how it works. It is a strategy that’s used to help build awareness of a brand using digital or online methods. It’s a powerful tool that allows you to create the message and brand awareness that your company needs in a crowded online marketplace.

There are a lot of components to digital PR. It includes things like blogging and guest posts. It may include developing online profiles and building social media follows. Podcasts and online videos you share are other potential inclusions. All of this contributes to what people know of your business and leadership.

What are the benefits of digital PR?

Utilizing it in the proper manner allows business owners to achieve numerous goals. Some of those benefits include the following:

1. It builds brand credibility

This type of PR builds your brand, and while doing so, it also helps build your company’s credibility. People learn of you but also learn why you are a leader in your industry. This type of PR helps people who find you online know why you matter.

One way it can directly impact credibility is with an “as seen on” bar that’s placed on your website. It can allow you to create credibility when you’re quoted in articles. Being referred to by an industry leader can help, too. People see all that you’ve accomplished and know you’re the person to follow.

Keep in mind that 91% of people use online reviews and other data to form opinions of companies. They do this long before they agree to buy from that company. Credibility matters.

2. It contributes to SEO

Properly placed and functioning PR like this contributes to search engine optimization (SEO). It may help by contributing to your backlinking strategies. A quote on a highly ranked and established website is going to help the search engines see the value of your website. A link to your website helps Google recognize its value.

This is a type of organic SEO strategy. It is highly effective at boosting your rank on the search engine results pages. Like all other forms, it has to be done properly.

3. It helps nurture leads

Many companies use email marketing as a core component of their marketing strategy. It allows you to bring customers back to your website. PR can help you with doing just that.

Create an email that showcases your efforts. It can discuss some type of valuable bit of information. It may include some type of recognition for a recent accomplishment. This allows current customers to recognize your credibility. It also helps to boost their interest in buying from you.

Those customers may tell others about your company, too. That helps to build traffic to your website with highly qualified leads.

4. It builds social collateral

What are you posting on your blog and social media pages? If you use brand mentions, a component of digital PR, properly, they could help to build your social collateral. That is, they can help people learn about and want to work with you. Connecting on social media like this can be quite powerful.

Promote your business with brand mentions on various websites. When you do, you are creating incredible content for your social media. That helps people to, again, recognize the credibility of your company.

5. It helps get attention from investors

Digital PR can be an excellent way to get your company in front of the investors you need to grow your business. For example, digital public relations allows for the placement of valuable, highly positive content online. When a potential investor learns of your company and researches it, they come across this information. That fuels their interest.

You can also link to those positive mentions in your “as seen on bar,” as mentioned previously. That allows investors to see exactly what you have to offer.

6. It builds your target market reach

One of the goals of this PR is to get your business in front of the people that are most likely your customers. Once you hone who your target market is, you can use brand mentions wisely to get in front of them. That could be done on social media. It could be about better ad placement.

The key here is that the content they read is valuable. It’s interesting as well as positive for your business. People want to learn about it. They’re interested enough to click through and visit your website.

7. It’s a positive ROI

A lot of the marketing you do now may have a reasonable ROI. Digital public relations ensure a better ROI. Every positive mention of your business creates a long-lasting mention online. That means that anything you invest in it will continue to pay off for years to come.

Some may not recognize the initial investment. No, you likely won’t get hoards of traffic to your site from a single PR mention. However, using it on social media, the brand credibility it helps build, and the potential leads you catch the eye of in your email marketing is where you’ll see the true benefits. This type of PR strategy is a slow burn, one that creates a lasting image of your business that continues to boost your online presence for a long time.

Utilizing digital PR

The goal of digital strategies like this is to help people learn who you are. What is your brand? Why is it the leader in the industry?

Most importantly, you want people to know why to connect, engage, and buy from you. It’s not a paid ad that lasts a few days. It’s a long-term investment in building your company’s credibility. Now’s the time to see how your brand can be utilizing digital PR to boost your credibility. If you aren’t sure where to start, see if Relevance can help.

The post The top 7 benefits of digital PR for your business appeared first on Relevance.

But how do you know if your digital PR campaign is working? What results can you measure? What KPIs should you set?

If you’ve ever struggled to evaluate the ROI (return on investment) of your PR efforts, you’re not alone. An educated growth marketer with up-to-date knowledge, tools, and techniques might be able to gauge if your PR is working (and, if not, what tweaks it requires to get back on track). However, there are some aspects that you can discover all on your own.

What Is Digital PR?

It’s hard to measure something that you don’t understand. So, what is digital PR? A digital PR campaign consists of online tactics that purposefully gain media coverage.

This could be a mention to one of your resources on a media outlet like Forbes or Entrepreneur. It could be a brand mention in a niche industry publication, too, or a guest appearance on a podcast. This strategic, unpaid placement is something growth marketers refer to as earned media. To be clear, you can manufacture an earned mention (such as agreeing to co-host a podcast episode or writing a guest post with a byline). However, it is only considered “earned” when you do so without reimbursement.

The result of earned media placements is better brand awareness and trust. Your reputation with consumers rises as they see you mentioned by credible third-party sources. This cultivates consumer trust and teaches your target audience that your company is a viable solution to their pain points.

The Need for Continuous Digital PR

PR outreach isn’t a one-time deal. It needs to be consistent over time. As you gather various mentions via different insights across a variety of publications and mediums, it sends a multi-faceted message that your brand isn’t just a flash in the pan. It is a sustainable and trusted source with answers that maintain their value over time.

It requires consistent investment, effort, and creativity as your team and growth marketing partners seek to keep your digital PR messaging continuous and relevant. As with any ongoing business expense, it’s important to know that your PR strategy is paying off.

The question is, how can you quantify the ROI of your PR?

Evaluating the ROI of PR

Marketing typically has an obvious metric. You get traffic from search engine optimization. Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing is easy to calculate. You can measure CTR (click-through rate) on an email.

When it comes to PR, many naturally connect the activity to referrals. They want to know how many leads they generated from each mention. However, that isn’t the goal of digital PR, and you’ll be sorely disappointed if that is what you hope comes out of it. Referrals tend to be more closely connected to things like affiliate and influencer marketing, where you can easily track each occurrence.

When it comes to public relations, then, what can you measure to calculate the success or failure of a digital PR campaign? The key to coming up with a viable KPI is to remember the goal here: to build credibility. In a sense, the fact that a third party is willing to use your brand as a positive example for something is invaluable.

At least, the value feels incalculable. The truth is, though, there are subtle ways to get a better idea of the worth that your PR credibility is generating.

Here are four benchmarks and metrics you can use to measure your PR ROI:

1. Increasing Credibility

This first one is a straightforward way to measure brand awareness as generated by digital PR. Are people recognizing your brand?

Of course, we’re not talking about just anyone. It’s great if your friends or co-workers know your logo when it pops up. But that doesn’t mean much.

You want to know if your target audience recognizes who you are and the value you offer. Do consumers and investors know who you are? Do you get a positive response when you’re brought up in industry conversation? The answer can help you gauge if your PR is working.

2. Improved Ranking

Effective digital PR enhances industry-specific elements of your brand. It creates a buzz around your business in the areas that matter.

When done well, this should increase the way you rank for branded search terms. A well-known horse farm, for instance, should show up higher on a search for “horse riding lessons.”

As you engage in digital PR, see if you’re ranking for more branded terms and showing up more in the SERPs. This is a good indicator that things are working.

3. Consistent Mentions

One of the most important metrics is measuring the consistency of your mentions. What is the frequency and quantity of your mentions across the web?

To understand this, you need to engage in media monitoring. This is similar to monitoring your reputation online.

However, in this case, you aren’t just reviewing how the interweb is talking about you in general. You’re looking for consistent positive messaging (much of which comes from deliberate PR attempts you initiated).

4. Stronger Marketing Material

Another way you can ensure you’re optimizing the ROI of each PR mention is by maximizing the mention after it publishes. You can do this by:

• Creating an “as seen on” bar on your website with links to mentions.
• Sharing mentions on company social media and platforms (a good social media scheduling tool makes this easier to stay consistent).
• Amplifying mentions through your email marketing platform or linking to mentions in your email signature with a “check out my recent mention in” lead-in text.
• Writing a summary on-site preview of the mention to post on your blog and then linking it to the original post.

By measuring things like consistency, credibility, and ranking, you can gain relatively specific insights into the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of your digital PR efforts. In addition, investing in thoughtful, targeted, and efficient repurposing of content (the right content repurposing tools help here) ensures that you have the best bet of making every digital PR effort count.

Backing PR Initiatives With Data

Growth marketing is a data-driven activity. It seeks to remove “gut instinct” from the equation whenever possible.

With something like PR, it can be hard to quantify how effective or ineffective your public relations activities are at any given moment. However, by measuring consistency in your mentions, maximizing each occurrence through complimentary growth marketing techniques, and investing in the right digital PR right partner, you can create a measurable metric to gauge your PR success.

The post How To Evaluate the ROI of PR appeared first on Relevance.

It’s exciting to see your company get exposure online. Digital PR helps build brand credibility, and it can be a major factor in establishing trust with your target audience—but its potential goes far past the initial mention.

Here are ten tips you can use to maximize each mention and make sure you’re getting every ounce of value out of your earned media coverage.

1. Reshare Published Mentions

When picked up by a publication, a mention will eventually go live, but this can take time. Watch for that to happen, and then use the fresh momentum to reshare their article on your own social media channels. This can maximize brand awareness—not just because it shows your own followers, but because it boosts the original piece’s traffic and helps it stand out, too.

And if you see the publication share it out? Even better! Incorporate that into your social media marketing strategy and help spread the word.

2. Use It In Your Email Signature

One of the quickest and easiest ways to enhance your online PR is to add an earned media mention to your email signature and hyperlink it. This pushes each mention out in front of a wide and diverse audience every time you send an email. A couple examples:

• Read our recent mention in PR Daily!
• Check it out – we were mentioned in Marketing Insider Group.

3. Leverage In Your Email Newsletter

Your newsletter list is a curated collection of loyal customers, nurturing leads, and anyone else interested in hearing what you have to say. This is an opt-in community that is ideal for helping you build momentum behind your mention. Share the link to your organic media in an email newsletter to demonstrate your industry-wide appeal and, once again, encourage your own followers to visit the page and build traffic momentum.

4. Add to an “As Seen On” Bar

Also called an “As Featured In” section, you can add a section to your website that features your media relations. This can be a sidebar, a footer, or even a section of a page as you scroll. One extra benefit of an “As Seen On” bar is that you can easily add to it as you build your digital marketing strategy over time, too.

5. Use It Your Sales Process

Digital public relations doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive. On the contrary, a good growth marketing plan creates synergy across all of your marketing activities. One way you can do this with each mention is by integrating it into your sales process. Depending on the circumstances, you can use it as a case study or even an example of your brand’s position as a thought leader in your industry. This reinforces your sales pitch to your potential customers and drives traffic to your mention at the same time.

6. Link To It on Your Blog

Owned media (i.e. communication channels you control) can also help synergize a mention. Consider incorporating it into your content marketing strategy by writing a company or personal blog post that features your mention. This can be a summary of the post that links out to “read more,” or it can be a follow-up concept that ties into your original mention or uses it as an example.

7. Use It Within Other Onsite Content

You don’t have to restrict mention references to an “As featured in” or blog section on your site. Look for other areas where you can organically work in your earned media efforts, as well. For instance, a mention praising a certain feature of your product or service might be well-placed on a sales page that encourages a potential customer to move down the sales funnel.

8. Encourage Team Members to Share It

Part of your PR strategy can be getting your team in on the action. While you don’t want to force anyone to do anything, you can easily generate organic shares for a mention by dropping it in a Slack channel, pointing out why it’s unique or special, and asking anyone interested or willing to share it on their own social media platforms. Take it a step further and write a few social media post options to make it easy for people to copy and paste.

9. Utilize It For Fresh Content Across Your Channels

A quick reshare when some press coverage goes live offers short-term support for a mention. However, you can capitalize on the long-term by adding it to a regular rotation of content posting across your social channels. Write new posts that integrate the mention in different ways, add the link, and remember to tag the writer and the publication.

10. Reference It on LinkedIn and Reddit

Along with personal and branded posts, you can use social media to engage with your target audience and answer questions. Use platforms like LinkedIn and Reddit to share your expertise and help address pain points—just make sure to use your brand mentions as a resource.

Making the Most of Earned Media Coverage

Maximizing your mentions is a key step in developing your brand credibility and a well-thought-out earned media strategy. It takes the marketing spark that a third-party mention creates and fans it into a flame.

You don’t have to do everything on this list to optimize your earned media coverage. However, executing even a handful of these tips can turn each mention into a superstar marketing asset to enhance your brand reputation.

Don’t know how to get some brand mentions of your own? We can help with your digital PR strategy. Trust us, it’s well worth the effort.

The post How to Make the Most of Your Earned Media Coverage appeared first on Relevance.

Here are 10 of the top digital PR services to consider in 2026, along with some additional thoughts on how to vet them, other digital PR tools to consider, and answers to some of the top frequently asked questions on the topic. 

Let’s dive in, shall we? 

Top 10 Digital PR Services

First, we have the services themselves. Here they are, along with a few thoughts on their strengths and a quick summary of each service.

1. Relevance

Overview and strengths: A growth marketing agency with a thorough approach to digital PR that integrates the marketing discipline with SEO and content creation to build credibility, visibility, and authority for a brand.

Summary: Relevance (ranked 88th on the 2023 Inc. 5000 list) is a full-service growth marketing agency. Digital PR is a central cog in its strategic approach to holistic marketing. Cultivating earned media helps establish credibility with key demographics and target audience segments.

The marketing experts at Relevance incorporate digital marketing into a larger strategy that also builds up visibility through SEO and authority through content. Effective digital PR on relevant, high-level publications is a synergistic element that helps these other aspects of marketing work together, accelerating a brand’s growth in the process.

2. Adogy

Overview and strengths: A flexible digital PR firm with custom strategies for any size enterprise and a track record of client mentions in high-profile publications.

Summary: As another leading digital PR agency, Adogy’s strength comes from its well-established network of media outlets and journalists. This makes it easy to surround a brand with third-party buzz. 

Adogy leverages high-quality articles to land premium brand placements and mentions. This organically puts the online spotlight on each of their clients. The service’s 90% pitch success rate demonstrates its team’s ability to execute digital PR strategies and create bonafide results.

3. 5th Avenue Brands

Overview and strengths: A PR agency specializing in building brands’ public profiles and thought leadership positioning in the finance, public policy, and B2B tech sectors. 

Summary: Fifth Avenue Brands’ digital PR goal is thought leadership. The agency engages in media relations and financial communications that broadcast brand messaging and build awareness across the finance, public, and tech sectors. 

Led by CEO Richard Lorenzen, 5th Avenue Brand’s team of seasoned PR professionals also engages in strategic planning to take advantage of every marketing opportunity. Risk mitigation and crisis communications are also critical in this area of business and are key aspects of the brand’s digital PR services.

4. BrandYourself

Overview and strengths: A PR firm dedicated to promoting positive messaging while maintaining and enhancing privacy on both personal and company-wide levels.

Summary: At first glance, BrandYourself is a PR agency dedicated to personal branding. However, the company has services for both professionals and their companies. These include strategic support to boost Google placement and build brand awareness. 

Along with these common digital PR offerings, BrandYourself focuses on cleaning up its clients’ social media profiles and overall image. For instance, it removes posts with the potential to damage an individual or brand’s image. The PR agency also helps with PR in the opposite direction by reducing the publicity of key information, such as addresses, birth dates, and contact information, when necessary.

5. Reputation Economy Advisors

Overview and strengths: A PR firm that streamlines and bolsters a brand’s digital PR by building leadership confidence and giving C-suite members insights into and control over the metrics that matter for promotional success.

Summary: Reputation Economy Advisors provides a model of trickle-down digital PR solutions. The company’s veteran PR team focuses on supporting leaders and encouraging them to embrace and champion positive change in the area of brand reputation management. 

The PR firm is focused on easing leadership concerns over reputation management and providing oft-elusive solutions to those risk concerns. It does so by identifying the reputation metrics that matter. From there, it comes alongside leaders and helps them glean actionable insights from that information to guide their brand’s promotional efforts.

6. Terakeet

Overview and strengths: A firm with a focus on digital asset optimization, including an emphasis on digital PR as a way to connect brands with their target audiences.

Summary: Terakeet’s approach to digital PR seeks to reach consumers who are conditioned to tune out traditional advertising. The agency focuses on its OAO (owned asset optimization) framework, which starts with understanding audiences and using that data to create a strategy with actionable insights.

Digital PR enters the picture as part of Terakeet’s prioritization of assets by “degree of control.” The agency seeks to categorize digital content into categories of owned, managed, and leveraged. From there, the goal is to create useful connections between a brand and its target audience by populating the internet with high-quality, high-utility content that resonates with consumers.

7. Digital Olympus

Overview and strengths: A digital PR firm with a link-building focus that seeks to combine topical authority with SEO value.

Summary: Digital PR can impact many aspects of a marketing plan. One of those is SEO backlink strategy, and Digital Olympus specializes in maximizing backlink impact. 

The online PR agency conducts a backlink profile analysis for a brand. From there, it creates a link plan to improve the quality and quantity of links pointing to a brand’s digital assets. Next, the Digital Olympus team outlines requirements, builds out a linking schedule, and monitors link performance to ensure results over time. While this is a specific approach to digital PR, it is a good option for anyone looking to leverage the digital marketing option specifically for link-building purposes.

8. Shout Bravo

Overview and strengths: A synergistic PR brand focused on creating quality content to promote via digital PR and influencer channels.

Summary: For Shout Bravo, everything starts with strong content. The company’s PR experts help brands generate high-quality content (worth “shouting” about). This content is original, optimized for a digital format, and focused on a brand’s target audience. 

Once created, that content becomes a springboard to generate third-party mentions across the internet. This step is conducted in collaboration with influencers and with link-building in mind.

9. Coinbound

Overview and strengths: A digital PR firm and marketing agency that specializes in the web3 and crypto spaces.

Summary: If a company is in a niche market, they may want to consider a digital PR firm that specializes in their specific industry. A good example of this is Coinbound. The digital PR firm is a top option for marketing cryptocurrency and web3-based companies.

Coinbound uses a highly integrated promotional approach with strategies that include PR and earned media. The agency has cultivated industry-specific contacts at many of the digital finance world’s top publishers, influencers, and media outlets. Coinbound may be specific to digital PR in the crypto world, but it is an excellent example of hyper-targeted digital PR services in highly competitive markets.

10. Thrive

Overview and strengths: A digital marketing agency with a fractionalized, á la carte approach to digital PR.

Summary: Thrive is an ideal option for marketing leaders who have an idea of what they want but who don’t have the time to execute their own vision themselves. The digital marketing agency offers a highly fractionalized and comprehensive number of digital marketing services, many of which fall under the digital PR umbrella.

For instance, companies can sign up for social media reputation management, social media management, and link-building services. By mixing and matching needs, they can create a digital PR support plan that helps them reach their brand’s digital PR needs while still maintaining a certain degree of control. 

Other Digital PR Tools to Consider

Digital marketing agencies provide third-party professional support that can shape and guide your public relations efforts. However, there are also many tools that either a partnering agency or your own internal staff can use to enhance your digital PR. Here are a few examples to keep in mind as you craft your digital PR strategy.

Glimpse

What is it? Glimpse is a marketing platform designed to inform and guide content creation. It provides key traffic and trend data that improves the chances that off-site content and mentions perform well.

How does it help with digital PR? Digital PR works best when it’s backed by high-quality, high-value content. This requires a steady stream of content creation that addresses the pain points and interests of your target audience. Glimpse makes it easier to discover those topics and related terms, isolate those with the highest search volume potential, and then focus your content creation in those areas. 

Cision

What is it? Cision is one of the biggest PR platforms on the internet. The tool is designed to generate massive exposure to journalists and media channels, supercharging digital PR efforts in the process.

How does it help with digital PR? One of the biggest challenges of digital PR is getting content out in front of potential third-party outlets. Cision specializes in broadcasting press releases and related time-sensitive promotional content. That way, journalists and media outlets can quickly become aware of and pick up branded stories that interest their readers.

Prowly

What is it? A platform designed to streamline the digital PR process and maximize its results. The one-stop PR tool helps with everything from drafting a press release to pitching to media and monitoring media performance.

How does it help with digital PR? Digital PR is a time-intensive activity. Prowly removes much of the burden of the PR process by helping create, pitch, promote, and track digital PR messaging. It is an ideal efficiency tool that works across countless industries, offering genuine PR content and providing data-driven results.

Muck Rack

What is it? Muck Rack is a tool designed to monitor your brand’s mentions. The Public Relations Management (PRM) platform helps with pitching, monitoring, and reporting digital PR in a single, comprehensive location.

How does it help with digital PR? Digital PR can be difficult to track. As you design and execute a digital PR campaign, these can quickly spiral into dozens, hundreds, and even thousands of earned media mentions. These aren’t all in a single, convenient location. They’re spread across the internet. Muck Rack helps monitor and track these mentions in a single dashboard.

Questions to Ask When Looking for the Best Digital PR Services

With so many tools and services available, it can be difficult to narrow your choices and select the right digital PR partner for your marketing needs. Here are a few questions to ask to help you hone in on the best choice for your brand. 

Do you know what you need from digital PR?

This is a simple initial question that is worth asking before you go out in search of a digital PR service. Even if you don’t have a precise answer, you want to consider what digital PR is to your marketing team, what media coverage you expect to get from it, and what you’re willing to invest in it. This gives you a clearer picture as you begin to vet various agencies.

Does the PR agency have experience in your industry?

Industry experience matters. Even if a digital public relations agency works with companies across various industries, make sure they have at least a rudimentary understanding of your industry and what creates success in that arena.

Does the PR agency utilize digital PR as part of a larger marketing strategy?

Digital PR is a helpful marketing activity. However, when used in a vacuum, it will only get you so far. Make sure a digital PR agency is willing to leverage earned media as part of a larger growth strategy that includes an emphasis on key pillars, including establishing authority, building credibility, and increasing visibility.

Does the PR agency have a clear approach to PR strategy?

Digital PR isn’t a “shoot from the hip” kind of activity. Any good agency will have a clear methodology and proven formulas and frameworks that they have used to generate success in the past.

Is the PR agency up to date on the latest Google updates?

Google is always changing. The brand’s Helpful Content Update in late 2023 unexpectedly upset the traffic for many well-established websites. Further updates in early 2026 are, once again, shaking up the industry. Make sure a PR agency is familiar with the latest updates and key search engine factors, like Google’s E-E-A-T standards.

Does the PR agency have the right connections?

PR starts with good content, but that won’t help if it doesn’t get published on the right platforms. Whether it’s through tools like Cision or Prowly (see tool recommendations above) or connections with high-profile journalists and media outlets, make sure each PR agency you work with has robust, relevant, and impressive connections to help get the word out about your brand.

Can the PR agency track metrics to prove success?

Data-driven marketing is the only kind of marketing that you can trust. A PR service should always be able to prove its impact on your brand through rock-solid data. The specific metrics may vary from one situation and agency to the next, and that’s fine. Just make sure you’re comfortable with how they can prove their success over time.

Frequently Asked Questions about Digital PR Services

Something as complex as partnering with a third-party agency for digital PR always creates an endless stream of questions. Here are some of the most common inquiries, along with some basic answers.

• What services should be included with PR? A good PR agency should come with proven strategies and frameworks, established media relationships, content marketing capabilities, and clear metrics for tracking results.
• What are successful PR metrics to measure? The ROI of PR is hard to measure — but not impossible. Factors like consistent mentions, improved Google ranking, and increased credibility help gauge the ongoing success of digital public relations.
• How much do digital PR services cost? Unfortunately, this isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer. At Relevance, we specialize in holistic growth marketing. That means we seek to create an ideal amalgamation of SEO, content marketing, and digital PR services to meet each client’s needs. We have clients that require heavy digital PR strategies, while others don’t need the service at all. If you want a price range, the best option is to get a quote. Reach out now for a free strategy session with our team, and we can explore the digital PR needs, cost, and impact we can provide for your brand.

Digital PR is a complex and nuanced activity. Working with a digital PR agency can help you reduce wasted time and resources and maximize the impact of this powerful online promotional channel.

Use the tips and suggestions above to identify the best digital PR service for your company. Then, reach out and initiate the process of collaborating to ensure your brand is effectively earning media as part of a holistic growth marketing strategy built for maximum long-term impact.

The post The Best Digital PR Services in 2026 appeared first on Relevance.

One of the best ways to build brand awareness is through a solid PR campaign. PR or “public relations” is a common term that marketers use in the course of promoting a brand. But what does it mean?  

Let’s investigate.

What Is Public Relations?

At its most basic level, public relations is an all-encompassing term that refers to the communication and relationship-building process that takes place between a brand and its target audience. Good PR builds trust, boosts credibility, and fosters familiarity with a company’s key customer demographics.

In practice, this manifests as companies seeking positive, natural brand mentions that put their business in the spotlight. These mentions keep them relevant and position them as an authority in their industry. 

A good PR strategy is different from normal advertising in the sense that it is the opposite of paid-for promotion. Rather than paying for an ad space, PR focuses on unpaid, earned, and credible mentions from third-party individuals and publications. 

What Does Public Relations Look Like Online?

PR can happen anywhere. Media coverage, such as a press release in the news or at a public event, is a PR activity. Even word-of-mouth marketing can quietly build the public image of a brand. 

While PR can happen “in the flesh,” modern PR takes place online. This is where people congregate from around the globe through various media relations, providing a massive audience that marketers can easily tailor to their specific target demographics. 

In addition, online marketing has a low barrier to entry. It is accessible, cost-effective, and easy to scale up or down to the current needs and budget of each enterprise. This makes it an ideal outlet for online PR efforts. 

Digital PR can happen in numerous ways, including: 

• Writing a guest post for an industry publication.
• Being mentioned in a high-DA (domain authority) third-party site.
• Creating shareable content on social media.
• Benefiting from UGC (user-generated content) on social media.
• Publishing a press release that journalists pick up and redistribute. 

A good digital PR strategy will incorporate each public relations activity into building a brand’s online presence. This can have a positive impact on a brand’s marketing efforts and can fuel growth. 

However, digital PR should never happen in a vacuum. It should be part of a comprehensive growth marketing strategy.

How Does PR Factor Into a Growth Marketing Strategy?

Growth marketing strategies are a holistic approach to marketing. They put the customer first and use data to back up each decision. They also focus on three key pillars: authority, credibility, and visibility. 

Growth marketers use content marketing to build brand authority. They use SEO strategies to enhance visibility. And for credibility? They use digital PR. 

Digital PR cultivates credibility by creating a buzz around a brand. When consumers see third-party sites referencing, quoting, and linking to a company, it creates a sense of trust. They begin to believe the company they are seeing has genuine solutions to their pain points and are more willing to try those solutions.

Working Digital PR Into the Growth Marketing Mix

Growth marketing is a comprehensive approach to marketing, and none of its elements stands on its own. That said, a good growth marketing plan combines digital PR with both content and SEO efforts. 

For instance, it’s difficult to gain mentions if a company doesn’t have high-quality content. Before pushing its presence out on the interweb, a brand should invest in creating valuable content that answers its target customers’ pain points. 

This linkable content paves the way for earned media. When a mention links back to valuable content that genuinely helps the reader, it also naturally enhances the public perception of a brand and builds its authority as a leader in their industry.

SEO also benefits and is benefited by digital PR. For instance, when a brand earns a mention, it often comes with a backlink to its site. Link building is a key piece of SEO success.  

The benefits flow both ways, too. When SEO works, it creates organic traffic. As a brand pops up in search engine results more often, it boosts credibility, bolstering digital PR strategy in the process.

Using Public Relations to Build a Brand

There isn’t one marketing solution that can single-handedly send a company to the next level. Consider hiring a digital public relations agency to help create an effective PR strategy. In most cases, brands and their marketing teams must use thoughtful, intricate marketing plans to capitalize on all of the promotional opportunities available. 

Public relations, and especially digital PR, is a powerful tool in that marketing tool kit. It enables marketers to build credibility, promote high-quality content, enhance SEO, and ultimately help a company reach its growth marketing goals.

The post What is Public Relations, and Why Is It Important? appeared first on Relevance.

Brand awareness is the attempt to develop awareness as well as trust for a business in the eyes of a potential customer. It associates your company with specific pain points and positions it as an effective solution to those problems. 

If you’re trying to boost your brand awareness efforts and increase brand recognition, it’s important to go about it the right way. Here are five ways to help you build your brand awareness effectively.

1. Start With Consistency

Let’s start with one of the most critical brand building items of all: consistency. If you want to improve brand recognition, your brand has to be consistent every time your target audience sees it. 

That doesn’t mean you can never change things. Rebrands are a reality at times, and it’s possible to alter and tweak branded elements as you go along. 

However, change should never take place flippantly. Why? Because you want to be consistent.

Consider all of the elements that represent your brand to consumers. There are colors, logos, fonts, labels, products, slogans, content — the list goes on. All of these are touch points by which a consumer can begin to build brand loyalty.  

For your outward-facing branded marketing to work, it has to look and feel the same across the board. Even something as intangible as a central story or marketing message for your company should always come across the same, whether you’re presenting it in a 2,000-word “About Us” page or a 100-word boilerplate on a press release.

2. Drum Up PR Buzz

PR is a key element of any brand awareness marketing strategy. If you want to generate brand equity and customer loyalty, you need to push your brand out into the spotlight. Digital PR is the perfect way to do just that.

Brands that continuously appear in relevant conversations are able to build consumer trust and enhance the customer experience. That means you can’t simply present canned pitches on a company blog and call it a day. You need to seek out meaningful PR opportunities on third-party platforms, such as getting your brand mentioned on an industry publication or news site. It’s one thing for you to say great things about your business, but you’re in a whole other ballpark when you have that third-party credibility of someone else saying something great about you. 

By positioning your brand in the right limelight and bringing powerful, positive, and insightful messages to the table, you communicate that you aren’t just another option. You’re a superior solution. You understand consumers’ struggles and can provide effective, thoughtful answers to their questions.  

The critical element here for effective brand building awareness is to continuously invest in digital PR. You can’t make a single push and expect to remain relevant in the modern, over-saturated marketplace. Ongoing digital PR keeps you in the spotlight and creates repeated exposure for consumers. It builds your brand into a company that is an industry authority with relevant answers.

3. Engage on Social Media

Awareness is dependent on creating a brand that your target audience can relate to on an individual level. One of the most powerful ways for businesses of any size to build that personal element into each marketing effort is through social channels. 

Social media marketing allows you to build communities around your company’s vision and mission. You can interact with an existing customer and answer the questions of curious potential buyers. Are you a beauty brand and your future customers are going to TikTok for the answers to their beauty questions? Then you need to be on that social media platform too. 

You can also invest in shareable content marketing and even embrace user-generated content. Influencer marketing can also help you build awareness and trust with highly-targeted audiences. Social media is highly interactive and also opens up the door to run contests and deliver free content as a way to offer value to your existing and future customer base. 

4. Invest in SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t necessarily an obvious choice for building awareness as a brand. But it’s an effective tool, nonetheless. 

When you invest in optimizing your business site with keywords and linking strategies, it can boost your SERP rankings. As you appear higher in organic search results, it does more than just improve site traffic. It can also begin to embed your brand name into the minds of those searching for targeted solutions for which you can provide answers. 

SEO is a common marketing technique that is often associated with traffic and revenue optimization. However, it can also play a critical role in the earliest stages of the sales funnel as you seek to increase brand visibility with curious customers.

5. Donate Resources

Charity work can be a powerful way to impact your community …and build your brand at the same time. Business strategist Nida Leardprasopsuk emphasizes the importance of not just one-time but ongoing “Do-Good” campaigns. These give back to society in ways that align with key elements of your business. 

For instance, you should choose to support causes that relate to the central focus and vision of your company. This spreads brand awareness among audiences that can relate to what your brand stands for. 

If you maintain hiring standards that reinforce brand identity (i.e., you hire workers who actually want to invest in your cause), choosing the right organizations can also improve buy-in from your workforce. This can increase loyalty and lead to better team performance — which can have a quiet but important impact on how effective your awareness efforts are.

Increasing Brand Awareness for Your Brand

Building brand awareness doesn’t happen in a day. Brand awareness campaigns take time. Consider partnering with a growth marketing agency that specializes in digital PR. If you’re willing to invest in a multi-faceted brand marketing campaign, they can provide guidance to help increase your brand awareness quickly and effectively. 

Use things like digital PR, social media, SEO, and “Do-Good” campaigns to grow your reputation and credibility with consumers. And remember to stay consistent every step of the way. If you can do that, the results will speak for themselves.

The post 5 Ways to Increase Your Brand Awareness appeared first on Relevance.

In this article, we’ll discuss several growth marketing ideas that you can use to boost your business along with examples of companies that have successfully implemented these strategies.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the visibility of a website in search engine results pages like Google’s. This is accomplished through techniques such as keyword research, meta tags, and link building. SEO is an extremely powerful way to drive traffic to your website and grow your business. While this is a long-term strategy that requires a lot of effort and dedication, the payoff can be significant. 

In 2023 every business needs a website, and SEO is the way to get it in front of the right people. Improving your website’s ranking in search engine results pages can increase visibility, drive more traffic, and ultimately grow your business. There are a variety of businesses that really benefit from SEO, but to see who’s really coming out on top, just take a look at who’s sitting in Google’s number one spot. 

Onsite Content

An SEO strategy is essential for modern businesses, but it’s not really worth much without quality onsite content. Audiences can’t search for content that doesn’t exist, so without it, you’re practically invisible online. Put simply, your content signals to search engines and your audience that you know what you’re talking about. When prioritizing onsite content, you want to make sure your business’s website has relevant material. Types of content may include blogs, infographics, and/or videos, but you have to choose what’s best for your business. 

Leveraging your online content allows your business to showcase your expertise, which can help you earn your audience’s trust and gently move them through your sales funnel. Canva is a popular design tool, and they are killing it when it comes to onsite content. They offer users thousands of design tutorials through their design school. It teaches people how to use their product while also showcasing  the features their service has to offer.

Digital PR

Digital PR is a powerful tool to help businesses build their online reputation and brand authority. With time, it can help you become a reputable industry leader. When done successfully, a digital PR campaign will result in brand mentions and backlinks from sites with quality domains, which increases a brand’s authority both in the eyes of search engines and human readers.

Any current industry leader is most likely benefiting from digital PR. Think about businesses positively mentioned on sites like The New York Times, Forbes, or Entrepreneur. Once those mentions are obtained, it heightens a company’s level of authority. So much so, it’s common practice to see “as featured in” sections on their website. Those sections speak to a level of authority and convince your audience by providing social proof. Strengthening the relationship your business has with the public is important, and digital PR does just that.

Influencer Marketing

Almost everyone is familiar with who influencers are and how they contribute to the marketing space. But to define for those who don’t know, influencer marketing describes a partnership with individuals who have a large social media presence to promote their products or services. Partnering with these individuals can be an effective way to reach a large and engaged audience that is likely to be interested in your products.

With this marketing strategy, you’re able to leverage influencer connections to promote your business. An example of a company that has had great success partnering with influencers is Fashion Nova. They’ve partnered with celebrities like Cardi B and Amber Rose to promote their brand on Instagram. The company made a million dollars on the first day that Cardi B’s line dropped — and that’s largely due to her dedicated fan base. 

Referral Marketing

Referral marketing encourages existing customers to refer their friends and family to your business. To incentivise these referrals, companies often offer rewards and additional perks to these existing customers. This can be an effective way to acquire new customers at a lower cost than traditional marketing methods.

Dropbox is a great example of a company who benefited from referral marketing. They grew their user base by offering more storage space to users who refer their friends to the service. Their company grew 3900% (not a typo!) in just 15 months. That’s wild, but it speaks to how capitalizing on your customer’s connections can really benefit your business.

Mobile Optimization

Optimizing your website, products, and services for use on mobile devices is crucial if you want to grow your business. According to Think with Google, “Almost half (46%) of consumers prefer to use their smartphone to complete the entire process from researching to buying.” This means that having a mobile-friendly website and making sure your products and services are easily accessible on smartphones is crucial to reach customers. Through optimization, you can increase visibility, drive more traffic, and ultimately grow your business.

Personalization

Personalization has become more and more important over the years as audiences expect to be treated as individuals rather than statistics — and rightfully so. However, it can make some marketing efforts more difficult. Personalization as a marketing strategy tailors messages and experiences to individual users based on their behavior and preferences. This can be a powerful way to increase customer engagement and retention.

Netflix is known for its personalized recommendations, which have been successful in keeping users engaged with the platform. According to the company, over 75% of the content that users watch on Netflix comes from its recommendation system. This highlights how effective personalization can be, especially as it keeps users engaged.

A/B Testing

A/B testing is the process of testing two or more variations of a marketing campaign, website, or product feature to see which performs better. This allows you to make data-driven decisions about which changes will have the biggest impact on your business.

If you’re familiar with the meal kit delivery service HelloFresh, they provide a nice example of A/B testing with their menu display update. When they redesigned their menu to create a seamless user experience while also promoting upselling opportunities, they compared their original design to the update. They found the final version contributed to a 7% increase in upselling, proving the second variation performed better.

Remarketing

Remarketing is a strategy in which advertisements are targeted to users who have previously interacted with your business. This can be a powerful way to increase sales and customer retention. Studies show that retargeting can increase conversion rates by as much as 150%. It also helps re-engage the 98% of visitors who leave a website without making a purchase.

Amazon’s retargeting ads, which show products that a user previously viewed on the website, have been very effective in driving sales. Just think about how your social media pages look after you’ve been scrolling on their product page. Those great finds sitting in your cart almost immediately end up on your newsfeed. If you’re not remarketing already, it’s an idea worth considering.

Deciding What Strategies Are Right For Your Business

It’s important to note that a single method may not necessarily drive the growth of your business. It is important to use a combination of multiple strategies and methods to achieve the best results possible. But you may also find some strategies aren’t worth the resources they will cost your company.

Growth marketing will look different for every business because not all approaches will help you reach particular goals. Continuously testing and refining your approach can help you identify what works best for your unique audience. The above-discussed growth marketing ideas are just a starting point, and you should continuously experiment with new strategies to find what works best for your business.

The post Growth Marketing Ideas: Boost Your Business with These Proven Strategies appeared first on Relevance.

Growth marketing is an increasingly important goal shared by small businesses and large corporations alike. However, tapping into some growth marketing channels, such as search engine optimization (SEO) or email marketing, can produce more growth than others.

All fine and well, but the question remains; how do you allocate a finite marketing budget?

Allocate Your Marketing Budget for Maximum Impact

Traditional marketing practices, such as outdoor advertising, still have their place. However, many of your potential customers miss these messages entirely. They walk right past your place of business, staring down at their smartphone. As they ride shotgun with a friend, their handheld device commands their attention…so they could easily miss that expensive billboard.

Spending on growth marketing channels makes it tempting to go with an either/or decision. However, businesses need to do a little bit of both to remain successful. As your marketing efforts increasingly shift into the digital realm, it might be helpful to have a roadmap. Which channels will be the most effective in your niche? If you plan to break out of your comfort zone, it would be great to be confident you are heading in the right direction.

Nowadays, most marketing experts agree that the following eight channels bring the most ROI for businesses. The channels you select will depend on your niche, but you can adapt most of these top eight growth marketing channels to suit your needs. As you devise your growth plans, ensure they will be worthwhile. For example, if video marketing isn’t the best choice for your industry, you’d probably like to know before investing in equipment.

1. Search Engine Marketing

Search engine results pages (SERPs) represent the critical metric for the success of all your assorted growth marketing channels.

If your growth marketing efforts are not moving the needle on SERPs, you’ll want to recalibrate until that changes. Dive into what keywords you should be ranking for, and what type of content you’ll need to create to move the needle. Once you are on the board, you’ll want to keep a close eye on your rankings and tweak strategies as necessary. Success on this channel can lead to relatively inexpensive yet consistent traffic for your site.

2. Content Marketing

The quality and usefulness of your online content are the primary means by which your company demonstrates that it knows its stuff. Content represents the main channel by which your domain authority (DA) will rise or fall. A rising DA signals search engines that your digital footprint should be ranking for those key search terms.

Search engines will crawl your site and verify that your company has the knowledge and content to support its claims. That content is also vital for moving a prospective customer through every stage of the sales funnel. It should answer questions and address common pain points at every stage of the visitor’s journey. Because of that, if you aren’t paying enough attention to this channel, now’s the time!

3. Digital PR

If a meaningful discussion is occurring online relevant to your industry, you want your company to garner a mention by others.

Third-party validation of your products and services is another key to building your online credibility. As unpaid third parties begin linking to your materials, citing you as an expert on the topic, your DA should rise correspondingly. This can help lead to better search rankings and can help your brand build credibility, all of which will help with growth.

4. Email Marketing

Email marketing is an integral part of promoting growth. As prospective customers move through the sales funnel, provide opportunities to learn more via email. Your online presence should nurture leads by providing in-depth materials that won’t perform well on smartphones.

For example, a website overview on a relevant topic could offer the opportunity to download an in-depth white paper in exchange for an email address. This way, your company will educate and respond to real-world needs as you grow your list of leads.

5. Paid Advertising

Don’t forget to allocate a portion of your online marketing budget to the growth channel of paid advertisements. Paid insertions on search engines and social media platforms that are popular with your target audience should provide measurable results.

As your company grows, you can reliably compare the cost of these ads to the number of referrals you receive. They play an essential role in ensuring that your company pops up in front of potential customers in the right place and at the right time.

6. Referrals

A robust, win-win referral program will pay enormous dividends as you seek recognition as an authoritative voice. When your products work well and your services generate positive buzz, you should leverage what others say to a great advantage.

As non-competing businesses begin to look to you for reliable answers, many others will feel the influence to follow along. Customers become unpaid cheerleaders. Satisfied customers begin to chat you up. Business owners start to notice when your company solves real-world problems for others. As a result, your DA climbs.

7. Influencer Marketing

For many industries, influencer marketing is more critical today than ever before.

Having another well-respected voice in your corner reassures potential customers that you are who you say you are. When someone with a respected reputation validates you with a recommendation, they are putting their reputation on the line.

Don’t jump in recklessly, though. It’s vital to sift potential influencers. Are they flashy? Is their reputation appropriate for your target client base? Try to steer toward respected industry voices. Avoid controversy at all costs.

8. Affiliate Marketing

Of all the growth marketing channels you need to address, affiliate marketing can represent “low-hanging fruit” for companies looking to see remarkable growth.

Once again, the enduring quality of your partnerships will strongly influence the quality of the audience. When any well-respected voice cites your company as authoritative, they carry all of their influence on others in their wake.

That’s a wrap.

So there you have it! You now know which eight marketing channels will appear on nearly every Top 15 list worldwide. Now it’s up to you to pick the growth marketing channels that make the most sense in your context.

Go in expecting at least some trial and error, but be quick to base all future decision-making upon empirical data should it appear that you need to change course.

Of course, many SMB owners are far too busy delivering quality products and customer service to have the time to devote to developing growth marketing channels. In these cases, it might make more sense to use a growth marketing agency to get you up and running. As you consider this option, look for an agency with the heart of a teacher. You’ll want to partner with someone who gives you a boost but “teaches you to fish for yourself” as its ultimate goal.

As you branch out into various growth marketing channels, try to remind yourself and your staff to have some fun and freedom to experiment. No one can predict with any 100% certainty how the swells in our shared digital ocean will move, so some adjustment will always be required. Just play to your known strengths, and remember…keep it real.

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